But a paradox exists. A mystery, if you will: even within postmodern neighborhoods seeking the supernatural there exists an aqueduct of animosity toward Christian mystery, particularly the miracles of Christ or those found in Exodus. This is nothing new. From the Arian controversy of the fourth century to Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, these are theories our culture perennially brings out of the attic in folding step with Christmas lights and Easter baskets. None of this is cause for Christian defensiveness, but rather a reminder that for all the entreaty of mystery there is little acceptance of Christian mystery.

I ask the question hundreds of times each year, especially to people who joined a church within the past year.

Now we have new research that gives us specific reasons why people decide on a particular church. As I noted in my previous post, I am grateful to Pew Research for their massive study on the behavioral patterns of members and guests.

In their most recent study, the respondents noted seven key reasons for choosing a church. They were allowed to offer more than one reason.

Childlessness isn’t just a married couple’s grief. I’ve never heard that call of “Mom.” Never felt that baby in my belly. Never seen my features in the face of a child. Never experienced hearing a baby’s first word or taking a toddler to his first haircut. Never been “the preferred one” to the child who only wants her mom when she’s sad, scared, or sick. When a new mother shares how her heart unimaginably expanded when she first held her baby, I can understand what she means only in theory, not by experience.

The HDMG thinks counselling is for weaklings and epidurals are for wusses. She demands my supplication and obedience, so I read parenting and home-keeping books, articles, blogs to try to do better. But she accuses me from there as well; I don’t move the furniture when I vacuum. I use formula and jarred baby food. I feed our family white flour. I can’t train my kids to pick up after themselves in “3 easy steps!”

I drove to New York on Tuesday for a quick respite in the hills and valleys of home and used the driving time to catch up with numerous friends on the phone. We all have had hopes dashed and disappointments furrowed deep within us and it reminded me nobody gets through unscathed. We are all the recipients of Adam’s sin, all billions and billions of us. To believe we alone are the only ones who get it, who have experienced this kind of acute pain, who feel alone in a world full of people who get everything they want is the enemy’s oldest lie. He told himself it first and then fell, and has been telling everyone else it since. “If you can’t beat ‘em, make ‘em join you,” is his mantra. If you have ever felt alone—if you feel alone today—then you have been on the listening end of the enemy’s bullhorn.

I refuse to play this game. I refuse to see my right to cast a vote as a zero sum endeavor. In my estimation, the operating value in voting Trump/Clinton to ensure Clinton/Trump doesn’t win is not principle at all, but politics. It’s a power move. It’s believing that what matters is party control.

I love teaching on a wide range of historical subjects. Get me lecturing to undergraduate American history students on the Cold War and the emergence of political conservatism, and I’m in my scholarly happy place. Step into my world history class and you’ll find me fired up to explain how colonization reshaped the entire world.

But teaching church history is different. While I bring some basic assumptions (and standards of historical research) to any historical study, studying and teaching church history is a profoundly theological enterprise.

Below are seven practical ways we can improve our preaching. And please note: I deliberately use the words “we” and “our,” because I’m thinking of my sermons as much as anyone’s. These suggestions are things I continue to work on as a preacher, sometimes with success and often with less progress than I would like.

The basement is Never Land. The university is Never Land. Even dating is Never Land, thanks to Tinder and a hook up culture that eschews commitment with the safety of online anonymity. Pop culture, with its endless fixation on comic books, child fantasy adventures, and nostalgia, is Never Land. Our American landscape is a monument to the heedless pleasures of knowing it all, playing it all, and sexing it all.

A few years ago, Emily and I were talking through something she read in a book on money. The big idea presented was that divvying everything up into categories of “needs” and “wants” is an oversimplification. A false dichotomy that leads us into one of two extremes, either treating money and wealth as something we are entitled to (as in prosperity theology), or acting as though money is entirely and utterly wicked.

The problem, of course, is neither is true. The either/or of what some have called prosperity vs poverty theology doesn’t seem to leave much room for appreciation or thankfulness. There is no real place for contentment if money is at best a necessary evil and at worst a god. You either hate it (and possibly hate that you have it) or you are never satisfied.

What I love about Paul’s letter to the Philippians is that he doesn’t encourage finding a balance between asceticism and obsession. Instead, he shows us an entirely different option—contentment.

The source of contentment

When I read this particular letter, I always get stuck on Philippians 4:10-13. “…For I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content,” Paul wrote.

I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

I find this really challenging, no matter how many times I read it. I want it to be easier. I want the Bible to either give me license to chase money or command me to outright reject it entirely. But Paul doesn’t do this. Instead, he says, I have learned to be content in every circumstance.

When I have all that I need materially, I am content, he said. When I have more than I need, I am content. When I have less than I need, I am content. And why? Because, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”

That is the source of contentment— the recognition that God is the one who provided all he had. God sustained him. He strengthens Paul. He provides exactly what he needed in any and every circumstance, even while Paul was imprison. And that knowledge, by God’s grace, is what allowed Paul to be content.

Becoming content with the money I have (and what I don’t)

The same is true for me, and for you. Just as he did with Paul, God still provides exactly what we need for today, even if it’s not enough in our eyes. He sustains us and strengthens us. And because of this, we too can be content in whatever circumstances, whether being blessed with abundance or struggling to rub to pennies together.

Here’s what that looks like for me:

I try not to presume upon on God that money will show up. The older I’ve grown, the more I am anti-debt. As of this writing, Emily and I owe a grand total of about $5,000 in the entire world. Most of that has been due to a major repair job on the car earlier this year. I try to manage my finances in such a way that we have a bit of buffer and aren’t maxed out every single month (this can be a challenge at times, especially when utility costs are rising). While we use a credit card to collect points, we don’t fund a lavish lifestyle using it.

I try to encourage us to enjoy what we do have. This means Emily and I do have a line in our budget for things like eating out and going out for coffee. We have room for babysitting and occasionally going to the movies if there’s something worth seeing. We are not in the same position financially as we were when we owned a house. As renters, we have significantly more.

I try to remind myself that I am a steward, not an owner. I don’t own the money I’ve been given. It all belongs to God. And because of that, I want to be wise with how I spend and also how I give. This attitude has been helpful for me because it reminds me to be thankful, even as it challenges me to be responsible. What God has provided is enough, and we have never been without.

Yes, we have lacked in terms of wants in some seasons over the last 11 years. There have been seasons where we were lacking in needs, too. But in those circumstances, it was no hardship to be thankful and mean it. We had seen God provide, and we could trust that he would continue to provide what we needed.

I believe in the primacy of Christ-centered expository preaching in the life of the church. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones asserted in his classic book, Preaching and Preachers, “I would say without any hesitation that the most urgent need in the Christian Church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and the most urgent need in the Church, it is obviously the greatest need of the world also.” I agree wholeheartedly with that statement. Lloyd-Jones also wrote in Preaching and Preachers, “True preaching, after all, is God acting. It is not just a man uttering words; it is God using him.”

Fix your grammar

I may have shared this a couple years ago, but it’s still pretty funny:

This is one of the great paradoxes of the gospel. It is the poor he makes rich, the weak he makes strong, the foolish he makes wise, the guilty he makes righteous, the dirty he makes clean, the lonely he loves, the worthless he values, the lost he finds, the have-nots who stunningly become the haves — not mainly in this age, but in the new creation to come.

I remember the first time I won a lottery ticket: I was 19, and for kicks, I purchased a random scratch ticket (I can’t remember the kind). To my surprise, I won $50. Now, at the time, $50 felt like a lot of money (though it wasn’t). So you know what I did? I blew it on a few more scratch tickets. And then I didn’t have $50.

I never habitually bought tickets—I wasn’t a part of the company lottery ticket pool, or anything like that. But every once in a while, I’d grab one just to see if maybe it was “the one”: the one that would take care of all my money problems, and maybe let me do something nice for my mom, too. The only problem was I never won, ever. I realize this was God withholding something that would not have been good for me now. But then, I didn’t acknowledge God. I didn’t worship him. I worshipped getting rich.

If I had one god, it was money.

I’m not saying I have this problem licked—I don’t. I’ll admit, there are days when my mind lingers a little too long on the what-ifs, all usually around the theme of “if I had a little more money…” But something pulls me back before too long: the realization that money is not what I serve. It is not what I want most. Christ is.

What money can’t satisfy, Christ does. The satisfaction I’m tempted to try to find in money can’t be found there. Instead, as the late theologian Notorious B.I.G. said so well, “mo money, mo problems.” But Christ satisfies and fulfills us in a way that no other person, no object, no ideal, nor anything else ever can.

It’s no wonder that Spurgeon wrote in The Saint and His Savior, “…love to Christ is ‘the best antidote to idolatry;’1 for it prevents any object from occupying the rightful throne of the Saviour” (250). Money and earthly possessions cannot deliver what only Christ can. A winning lottery ticket—whether it’s $950 million or $90—won’t bring happiness in the end. Whatever pleasure it brings is fleeting. What pleasures Christ offers satisfy eternally.

It took me a long time to figure that out. To be honest, there are times when I still forget it. But the fact remains: what a lottery can’t satisfy, Christ can. He holds nothing back. He offers us the greatest gift of all–himself. And that is more than enough.

I wish I never had to deal with conflict. I am a card-carrying conflict avoider. Whatever the reason (character, context, sin, etc.) I would rather run away from conflict than take it head on. It wasn’t until I began my training as a counselor at nearly thirty-years-old that someone explained conflict didn’t always have to do damage. In fact, it was possible to have conflict with a person and to feel closer to them in the wake of it.

This was a revolutionary idea to me. However, skilled conflict doesn’t come easy. It requires dedication, persistence and the willingness to forgive when things go poorly. In other words, it mirrors the rest of our Christian walk.

Am I eager and passionate about pursuing unity? If I was eager for unity would I have so casually made the decision to distance myself from this sister? Or would I have instead been burdened with a desire to speak the truth in love. I realized that many times I have contributed to disunity not because of what I did, but because of what I didn’t do. Fear and selfishness have held me back from speaking the truth in love.

I’m not sure many abortion supporters realize how similar they sound to gun rights supporters, with whom they often (and vehemently) disagree. This is why I ask, “Do you really support gun control?” Because I’m not sure advocates for abortion realize where their reasoning leads on the issue of gun control.